


Dark Times Like These

by cheshire_carroll



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Apocalypse, Dark, Dark Rose Weasley, Dark fic, F/F, One Shot, Sort Of, Time Travel, pre-slash relationship - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 03:10:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14010873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshire_carroll/pseuds/cheshire_carroll
Summary: Her mother had once told Rose Weasley how the colour of her hair always reminded her of red roses. When Rose looks in the mirror now, she doesn't think of roses, she thinks of weeping rivers of blood.There is a certain dichotomy in Rose's head, in this whole fucking world that's destructing around them, a terrible, tragic sense of 'Then' and 'Now' that is the difference between red roses and rivers of blood.





	Dark Times Like These

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for a dear friend who just helped me through a very dark moment <3

Her mother had once told Rose Weasley how the colour of her hair always reminded her of red roses. When Rose looks in the mirror now, she doesn't think of roses, she thinks of weeping rivers of blood.

There is a certain dichotomy in Rose's head, in this whole fucking world that's destructing around them, a terrible, tragic sense of _Then_ and _Now_ that is the difference between red roses and rivers of blood.

 _Then_ Rose was a cheerful, kind girl growing into herself and who she was; a studious Gryffindor, a loving daughter, sister and friend and always so curious about the world around her, so happy to learn all that she could as dreamed of how she could contribute to bettering the world.

 _Now_ she's a gaunt caricature of her childhood self, a barely stitched together idea of who she once was and could have one day been; a bitter, biting, broken creature that barely feels human on the best of days.

 _Now_ she can't stop seeing the expression on her daddy's face as he watched his wife, _Rose’s mum_ , die in front of the entire world. _Now_ her dreams are filled with the memory of how it smelt when her brother burned. _Now_ she's haunted by the sound of Scorpy's crazed screams when Al's body was found, by how she had to hold him back, how he fought her, how desperately he had struggled, wild and feral and singleminded in his determination to reach Al (she'd known better by then, they all had– any abandoned corpses were traps, otherwise there would have been nothing left but ashes).

She remembers how hollow Scorpy had been afterward, how lifeless— the only times he hadn't resembled an inferi was when he was fighting. She remembers burying him, when he didn't return from his latest kamikaze run. She remembers her lack of grief at his death because she'd already lost him, she'd lost him the moment they'd lost Al and what had remained was just a dead thing with both feet already in a grave.

She remembers losing everyone she ever loved and wondering _why why why_ she was still alive. Why she hadn't died yet. Why she was carrying on a pointless fight. Why she didn't just turn her wand on herself.

But Rose is her mother's daughter, even now; to just give up and let the bastards win isn't in her DNA. Rose is her mother's daughter, she has her mother's brains and her mother was the smartest witch of her age– the first muggleborn Minister of Magic, the first to truly recognise the threat of muggles and preach wariness, the first to warn of the danger of _obliviation_ in the new world of camera phones and the internet, the first to speak out of what the consequences of failing to adapt would be.

(Hermione Granger-Weasley had done her best to calm the panicking muggle masses, after the Statute was destroyed by a couple of drunk teenage wizards who'd been _too fucking careless to realise what they'd just done, how they’d just doomed them all_ –

With the intention of preventing muggles from reacting badly to the sudden magic reveal, Hermione had been about to give a speech at the UN that would be available live on every news station and TV channel across the globe to make sure that the truth– or as close to it as possible– was out there for everyone to hear. It was her attempt to encourage transparency and a healthy discourse between magicals and non-magicals as they both came to terms with how their understanding of the world had suddenly changed.

It might have worked. Rose likes to dream that, sometimes. But in the end Hermione had never been given the chance to unite magical and non-magical people because a muggle had _shot_ Rose's brilliant, amazing mother, right in front of the entire world. He _shot_ her, shouted " _burn the witches!_ " and the whole world went mad)

Rose is her mother's daughter and war had shaped Hermione Granger-Weasley from a schoolgirl to the brilliant, powerful, terrifying witch she had been, just as this pointless war of horror and madness and death has turned Rose from an innocent child to the witch she is now; filled with raging fury and burning hatred, desperate and vicious, ruthless and calculating— _and capable of doing whatever it takes._

She's dangerous in all the ways that the muggles had feared most and now she doesn't even blink as she cuts down every person standing in her way to reach the solution she's cobbled together out of old suspicions, theories and speculation.

Azkaban is one of the only magical buildings still intact– even Hogwarts is gone, reduced to rubble by an air strike. It's heavily guarded and provides refuge to the desperate– which is all of them now– and out of all its old inmates, only the most dangerous, evil and uncontrollable are still kept locked up in its depths. They would have been killed, if everyone left wasn’t so horrified now by the idea of witches and wizards killing witches and wizards, of more magical blood been spilled (Rose thinks it’s pathetic, but she’s always had more important things to focus on).

Nobody is supposed to go down to see them.

Nobody is capable of stopping Rose when she decides to do just that.

When Rose uses a powerful burst of magic to force the iron doors to the cell she wants open, the first thing she sees is that beautiful, twisted smirk, the one that had once been printed full-colour in every wizard-run newspaper in Britain.

Delphini Riddle, with her long, tangled white-blonde hair, dark blue eyes and angular face, is as breathtakingly lovely as any of Rose's part-veela cousins had been. A prison cell buried deep in the depths of Azkaban has done little to detract from her cruel beauty, sapping the colour from her skin but adding a new razor sharpness to her cheekbones.

Al and Scorpy had told Rose all about their 'crazy wild time-travelling adventure', had repeated to her Delphini's bold, proud words– _“I am the new past. I am the new future. I am the answer this world has been looking for”._

She hadn't been the answer then, of course, but Rose has just cut her way through nearly a dozen of her own allies to free this murderess because Delphini could very well be their world's best chance now, the only answer it– and Rose– has left.

From where she kneels on the ground of her blown open prison cell, the bastard daughter of Lord Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange wears a far too knowing look on her far too pretty face. Her position, her posture, is supplicant, submissive even; her expression is anything but.

Rose crouches in front of her, meets that dark, dangerous delphinium-blue gaze with her own fierce, pale-frosted one. "You know why I'm here." She tells her, not wasting either of their time.

Delphini's twisted smirk widens to a cruel smile as devastatingly beautiful as she is. "Rose Weasley," she says, her voice like silk sliding over steel, just the barest trace of a sibilant hiss audible in it. "You weren't who I was expecting."

Rose doesn't smile back at the older witch. "I don't have the time nor the inclination to play games with you. Will you or won't you help me?"

"You haven't exactly given me any incentive," Delphini points out, honeyed and sly with a malicious sort of playfulness.

"I'm sure we can sort something out between us," Rose replies, all saccharine-sweetness and wintry eyes as she leans in so their faces are barely inches apart, " _girl to girl_."

Delphini's laughter as she rises to her feet with a sinuous sort of grace is surprising in the fact that it's entirely genuine. She extends a slim, pale hand to the still-crouching Rose. "Using a time-turner was always my first preference," she admits, "but it was never my only option."

"I know," Rose says, accepting the offered hand and all its implications, letting Delphini help her stand back up. “Well I guessed, anyway." She amends. "You were too clever, too careful, to not have a back-up plan or two ready in place."

By the time Delphini was confident enough to play her hand by setting her plans into motion, Rose had been willing to bet lives on her conclusion that the Dark witch had had a back-up plan ready to use should the time-turner have proved incapable of achieving her goal of unravelling the fabric of time in order to twist history into the image of her desire.

"Your mother figured it out too," Delphini tells her with purposeful cruelty, bringing up Hermione Granger-Weasley with the clear intention to hurt, to cut deep enough to draw blood. It might have worked if Rose wasn't already so numb to loss. "She visited me in my lovely cell, years before we went to war with the filthy muggles, and asked if I felt like sharing."

"It's a good thing you were in a contrary mood, then," Rose bares her teeth at Delphini in what can only very generously be called a smile, not rising to the bait.

"Yes it is," Delphini smiles back, just as vicious and biting. "It's funny, isn't it? All that time I spent learning how to destroy the world, I never dreamed for a moment that I was also learning how to save it. My freedom for the world, Rose. I think that's a fair deal."

"More then," Rose agrees easily. "So long as you don't plan on burning it yourself."

Delphini exhales quietly then, losing some of her sharpness. "No, I've quite got all that out of my system," she admits, with a wry, almost self-deprecating twist of her mouth. "Solitary confinement combined with a skilled therapist has the frustrating tendency to prompt a certain degree of introspection– and as they say, you should never meet your heroes. Besides," she looks at Rose slyly from under her lashes, a wet, pink tongue slowly tracing her lips. "I think I’ve just found something... _interesting_ enough to keep me distracted."

Rose feels a brief flash of very real surprise that quickly edges into intrigue. Because she doesn’t lie to herself, doesn’t see the point, and she already knows what her future in a past-made-present looks like— she’ll be a broken thing in a never broken world, never really belonging in a present that will never really be hers. It's a price that Rose will always be willing pay, to give witches and wizards a second chance to fix the mistakes of her nightmarish present in order to prevent the mass slaughter of the magical population.

But Delphini is just as damaged as she is, just as dark and dangerous too, and suddenly the possibilities stretching out between the two of them in the new, unbroken world they will create for the people Rose loves are as intriguing as they are endless. She has always had a weak spot for interesting things, even more so the ones that challenge her. Delphini Riddle is certainly a challenge– but more then that, right now she's a solution, the answer to this broken world’s needs.

"Help me save the world," she says, stepping forwards into Delphini's space, leaning so their faces are barely an inch apart and Delphini's breath brushes hot against her mouth. "Help me save the world and I'll show you just how interesting I can be." 


End file.
